This article was taken from USA TODAY.
                         Thursday, November 9, 1989

                 ANIMAL INSTINCTS AT CENTER OF QUAKE DEBATE
                                By Steven Jay
                            Special for USA TODAY

     During the   week   before   the  October  17,  1989  San  Francisco
   earthquake, Dolores Denilla  had   a   problem,   snakes.   They  kept
   slithering out of the creek near her Watsonville home; she had to kill
   14.

     "It was weird because maybe one comes out of the creek  a year," she
   said.  In Vallejo,  at  Marine  World  Africa  USA,  the  llamas  were
   restless October 17.  When handler  Jennifer  Deffenbaugh tried taking
   them for a walk, "they spit at me and tried to kick me."

     In Santa Cruz, Beverly Strite's 6-year-old dachsund  hid  under  the
   bed six hours  before  the  quake.  Dozens of stories circulating like
   these have produced  the  latest  aftershock:   renewed  debate  about
   whether the earthquake predictors should be looking again to animals.

     The federal  government  in  the  early  1980's  stopped   financing
   research on the  once-popular theory on grounds it was a crackpot idea
   and not as helpful with long-term  predictions.   Yet  the man drawing
   most attention for predicting the Oct. 17 quake was  Jim  Berkland,  a
   Santa Clara County  geologist  who  relies  on  animals.  Although the
   quake was bigger than he predicted  - he forecast a 6.0, compared with
   a 7.1 - his timing was on the money: between Oct. 14 and 21.

     Berkland made   his  prediction  on  Oct.  13.   He   was   put   on
   administrative leave because  he's  not  supposed  to  make earthquake
   predictions.  "Nature has an awful lot to tell us but unless we have
   our ears, eyes and minds open, we won't hear," he says.

     Joan Gillespie of Campbell, Calif.,  claims his prediction saved her
   up to $6,000 in china and crystal.  "I don't care if he reads corns or
   bunions. I listen because he's been right too often,"  Gillespie says.
   But Roger Hunter,  a  U.S.  Geological  Survey  geophysicist,  studied
   Berkland's findings and  "concluded   he   wasn't  doing  better  than
   chance."

     Some mainstream  earthquake  predictors  are  willing   to  consider
   Berkland's approach.

     In 1975,  Chinese scientists successfully predicted a major quake on
   the basis of snakes emerging from  underground  dens  and  strange dog
   behavior.

     Calvin Frederick,   a  UCLA  psychiatric  professor,   has   studied
   household animals and  thinks they react to building vibrations.  Nick
   Corini, a Morgan Hill pigeon-racing  buff,  lost 26 pigeons before the
   quake.

     "These are  birds  that  don't  lose their way. When  someone  comes
   talking about lost  dogs  and  cats  you  tend  to  be  skeptical, but
   (Berkland has) made a believer out of me."

                  Submitted for KeelyNet by : Ronald Barker